It was during my novitiate so many years ago, that I first became aware of the harsh reality of children having to live rough on the streets. Our novice-master showed us a film called Los Gamines about the work with street children of Fr Javier Jav de Nicolo SDB in Bogota, Colombia. It portrayed vividly the struggle that so many children had to go through just to survive. It left a lasting impression on me!
Fr Javier was a pioneer in this type of work. He had been in Colombia for a number of years, working hard as a missionary in our various Salesian schools. He would often see street children, known as gamines, loitering beyond the school gates. He often tried to reach out to them, but any attempts to help on his part always met with failure. It was because the gamines were always suspicious of anyone who would try to change their way of life.
They lived in a world of their own. By day, they roamed the streets in small gangs - begging, gambling, and stealing. By night, they huddled together for warmth and protection. They lived on the edge of society, trapped within the grip of hunger, disease and neglect. Yet, they continued to cling to this tragic way of life, because it was a kind of a freedom; freedom from abuse and control. It would take a lot of time and patience to break the walls of distrust and suspicion that had accumulated over the years.
It finally dawned on Fr Javier that the only way for him to be able to connect with them was to share their lives on the streets. He started to spend days and nights going about the neighbourhood frequented by the gamines; he would stand on street corners, engaging with them and hearing their stories. He went everywhere with them, watching them as they made their way through traffic jams, crowds and shoppers. He shared with them the scraps of food they managed to scavenge from large cafeterias. He joined them in hanging around in risky places where they would spend most of their free time.
This was the only way that he could gain their trust. Once befriended, they would open up to him and share their problems. It was then that he was in a position to help. He would invite them to join one of the programmes of reintegration, offering them a home, education but most importantly a community to which they could belong, a place they could call home. His intervention proved to be quite successful, and he served as a model for other initiatives for other Salesians of how to reach children who have fallen through the cracks.
Fr Javier got his inspiration from the founder of the Salesians, St John Bosco, a popular saint renowned for dedicating his life for the welfare of young people. In his own time, Don Bosco met with a very similar situation regarding street children. As a newly ordained priest in the city of Turin in Northern Italy, he was moved by the plight of hundreds of young people who had come from the countryside looking for work, but found themselves in a dire situation, struggling to survive. He also spent time with them on the streets and through his friendly approach he managed to reach out to them.
For five years wandered the streets with them, being chased from place to place, having no permanent place where to host them. When all hope seemed to be lost when he and his boys were was once again evicted from the field they were using, providence seemed to intervene. He was able to secure a humble shed and field. It was Easter Sunday, the 12th of April 1846. Is it a coincidence or providence that this day nowadays marks the International Day of Street Children?
The Salesians have inherited Don Bosco's predilection for destitute young people; my own opportunity to come directly in contact with street children was when I first went to Nigeria as a missionary some twenty years ago. Over the ten years I spent in Nigeria and Ghana, I was able to visit different Child Protection Centres run by the Salesians set up to help street children come off from the streets. It is only when one befriends these children and interacts with them, that one discovers that there is a basic human goodness in them and not the hardened criminals people take them to be.
On the same site of that humble shed and field where Don Bosco started his work with street children in Valdocco, we nowadays find the Motherhouse of the Salesians. These last two months some 220 Salesian delegates from 136 different countries have been gathered for the 29th General Chapter, which will actually conclude today, 12th April!
It is the Chapter that has elected a new Rector Major, Fr Fabio Attard SDB, a Maltese Salesian who now, on the 150th anniversary of the first Missionary Expedition, takes on the responsibility to lead the Salesians spread throughout the world to continue Don Bosco's mission for the young.
In a very symbolic and prophetic gesture, the new Rector Major, Fr. Fabio Attard, chose for his first public meeting to visit the Ferrante Aporti juvenile prison in Turin, the same prison, which Don Bosco used to visit, then known as the Generala, and 'where Don Bosco's Preventive System was born'. As Fr Attard explained, 'In every young person, even the most unfortunate, there is an accessible point of goodness'.
To mark the 150th anniversary of the first missionary expedition the Salesians in Malta have launched a campaign to support the plight of street children in Africa.
You can contact the Salesian Mission Office at [email protected]. For more information visit www.sdb.org.mt
Fr Richard Ebejer, a Salesian of Don Bosco, is an experienced educator and priest with a long-standing commitment to accompanying young Salesians. His missionary work has taken him to Ghana, Nigeria, Tunisia and Ireland. He currently serves as a member of the Chaplaincy team at MCAST.